Please take note of this interesting piece of research in the current issue of „Perspectives on Terrorism„: „This article considers the implications of criminalised Muslim Diaspora community members from the West travelling to the Middle East and becoming involved in the terrorist activities of the Islamic State (IS), and ultimately returning from whence they came. It also reflects on the differences over time amongst the profile of recruits that have taken place since the time of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, to the ascendancy of IS. Recent research indicates both terrorist and organised crime groups draw recruits from the same Diaspora communities, a position supported in this article. While the focus of law enforcement and media attention appears to be on the potential of Islamic State Middle East veterans committing terrorist acts in the West on returning from conflict zones, there may well be a pervasive danger of them bringing significant risk to their countries of origin through enhanced participation in organised crime. The views of a selection of recently retired police professionals were gathered, and were found to support concerns around this potential significant and dangerous outcome of homecoming foreign fighters.“ (Source: abstract)

It is obvious that in the future any kind of structured threat-assessment (e.g., as in personal security and protection or travel security) will have to rely on comparable tools for threat management and risk scanning.

In terms of developing such a toolset for risk and security management cockpits, it will have to cover macro level analysis (see e.g. Stratfor or other providers), should be able to generate short term intelligence on temporal and geo-spatial patterns for crisis assessment (such as Echosec or utilizing the forward-looking capabilities of Blab) and it will need to deep dive into the internet for subtle crisis signals and longer-term build-up of critical situations (e.g. by the help of Recorded Future).

Looking at the corporate security staffing needs many European companies face, when setting the scene for a pro-actively managed global risk landscape, there seems to be quite some room for improvement!

The Institute for Economics and Peace recently has released their 2014 Global Terrorism Index. Well, it’s not just another report. Please have a look at it for the sound analytics behind the expertise and take Your time to reflect on their empirical study on Peace and Religion (a global statistical analysis on the empirical link between peace and religion) as well!